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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165944">Dying Embers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningLio/pseuds/BurningLio'>BurningLio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Colony [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Promare (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical Disability, Slavery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:55:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,291</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165944</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningLio/pseuds/BurningLio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gueira and Meis struggle to protect the Burnish survivors, and each other, in the Burnish work camp on Omega Centauri.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gueira/Meis (Promare)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Colony [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659124</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dying Embers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>First, I made a twitter for Promare content, so come say hi if you like, it's @BurningLio. I've also started a server for KrayLio fans - drop me a DM on Twitter if you want an invite! </p><p>Second, if you're finding this fic before the other entries in the series, it should stand alone reasonably well, but do mind the tags on the other installments before you read them since they have quite a few more content warnings than this one.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Being transported between work sites is much like being arrested back on Earth, except that the cuffs on Meis’s wrists are ordinary ones. The transport vehicle is much the same, the Burnish seated around him are just as subdued, and everyone knows that Colonial Security is just the updated new face of Freeze Force. Probably they have some duties among the regular humans of the colony, too, but in the Burnish compound it’s as if nothing has changed.</p><p>Well. That’s not quite true, is it.</p><p>The truck jolts to a halt, and the doors swing open. The officer sitting by the doors, lazily guarding them with a gun leaning against his leg, stands up and methodically unlocks each Burnish worker’s cuffs, which are chained to rings in the floor. There’s eight of them in this transport, and they file out once the guard exits, all of them knowing better than to make any move until he’s gone. Meis goes last, waiting until the last Burnish is on her way to the doors, then standing up and limping out of the truck after her. His ill-fitting prosthetic clangs obnoxiously against the metal floor, punctuating his lopsided gait.</p><p>As soon as they’re all out, the guard counts them - ridiculous, they were counted when they boarded the truck, and where could they have gone? - and then returns to the truck, and they’re free to go, or as free as they ever are. In some ways, the compound isn’t any <i>less</i> comfortable than living on the run, but there’s the sense of being caged: the high walls, the armed guards. Omega Centauri’s sky is nearly dark, and Meis can’t help but hope he’ll be moved to an above-ground work site soon. He never gets to see the sun anymore, even if the sun here is bigger and redder than he’s used to. </p><p>The first thing he does, as always, is start looking for Gueira. It’s selfish, but there’s precious little he gets to be selfish about these days, and he never quite feels settled until he knows Gueira is here. There’s no way of knowing whether he’s back yet - the lengths of work shifts tend to vary a little - but lately Gueira’s been getting back first. Before he can get far, though, he hears someone shouting his name.</p><p>“Meis!” It’s not Gueira - he turns and sees one of the kids, a boy of about eleven who’d lived in the old settlement with his grandmother. She’s gone now, the oldest and weakest among them having largely perished in the attack on the settlement or in the engine itself. “Meis, come quick! It’s Gueira!”</p><p>Ice cold grips at Meis’s heart as if he’s just been shot by a freezing bullet. “Show me,” he commands, and the boy leads him through the compound. On one of the walls is the station where they’re given their rations, and Burnish have lined up for their evening meal. Meis hears the shouting before he sees what’s happening, and his heart quickens at the sound of Gueira’s voice.</p><p>“—the fuck is wrong with you?!”</p><p>He sees Gueira standing in front of one of the ration stations, shouting furiously at the armed guard standing behind it. The guard has his gun leveled at Gueira’s chest, his lip curled contemptuously. There’s another man standing behind Gueira, tall and lanky with a ragged brown ponytail, and he looks both exhausted and terrified.</p><p>“Listen, dumbass, you know the rules,” the guard says. “Scum that don’t work don’t eat. He makes it to his assignment tomorrow, he gets a meal.”</p><p>“He’s <i>sick,</i> you bastard! If you assholes actually gave us enough medicine maybe he wouldn’t be-” Gueira breaks off into a fit of wheezing coughing, gasping helplessly for breath. He sways and Meis is close enough to catch him, putting an arm securely around his waist to help him remain upright.</p><p>The thing is, most of them may have survived, but none of them emerged unscathed from the engine. Meis’s right leg is gone below the knee, replaced with a clumsy, rudimentary prosthetic so he could work without crutches - and he counts himself one of the lucky ones. Gueira lost his left arm, but the damage doesn’t stop there. When Meis first found him after they were released from the pods - reeling and stunned and unsure why they were still alive - Gueira was on his knees, coughing up ashes so thick and fast they threatened to choke him. It was easily the most terrifying moment of Meis’s life. The ashes passed and Gueira survived, but something’s wrong with him now, something inside him. The engine, it seemed, did not only take their extremities as it sapped their life force. Meis has no way of knowing for sure, but it seems like Gueira’s lungs were damaged, because he struggles to breathe much of the time, breaking into coughing and wheezing fits when he overexerts himself. It doesn’t help that while the air on Omega Centauri is breathable, it’s thin and poorly oxygenated this early into the terraforming process - he’s pretty sure from what he’s heard that the elites who live in the converted Parnassus have a pressurized environment inside, but the Burnish have no such luxury. What Gueira really needs is medical attention, but Meis knows well enough that that’s not going to happen. All Gueira has is him.</p><p>The guard jerks his head at Meis. “Get him out of my sight before I put him out of his misery,” he snaps.</p><p>Meis lifts his chin stubbornly, meeting the guard’s gaze coolly. “Soon as I get my ration,” he says calmly. “I just got back from my work assignment at the lithium mine.”</p><p>It’s a gamble, but after a moment the guard grumbles and throws the ration bar at him. Meis catches it, then turns toward Gueira, lowering his voice. “Come on,” he murmurs. “We’re holding up everyone else.”</p><p>That seems to get through to Gueira, and he lowers his head in defeat. “Fine,” he mutters.</p><p>Gueira’s got his breath back, but Meis keeps his arm around him anyway as they walk away. “Let me guess, they didn’t give you any rations either for making a fuss.”</p><p>Gueira scowls. “Amazing, how’d you know?” he says sarcastically.</p><p>Meis breaks his ration bar in half and pushes one of the pieces into Gueira’s hand. Then he turns and hands the other to the ponytailed man who’d been too sick to work, who has followed them from the ration station. “Here,” he says. “Sorry we can’t do more.”</p><p>“Thank you,” he says. His voice trembles. “I, uh - saw him today, by the way. I thought you’d want to know.”</p><p>Gueira stiffens against Meis, and Meis has trouble keeping his voice steady when he answers. “Thank you,” he says, and he means it, but it’s still hard to sound gentle when he’s suddenly tamping down the urge to burn everything to the ground. Never mind that his flames don’t respond to him anymore. “Did you… see how he looked?”</p><p>The man doesn’t meet his eyes, his face falling. “Not up close. He was limping, though. He kept stumbling.”</p><p>“<i>Fuck,</i>” Gueira says softly.</p><p>Meis clenches his fist, taking a couple of breaths before he’s able to speak. “Thanks for… for letting us know he’s still alive,” he says, unsteadily. The man nods, expression full of sympathy, before he turns and leaves.</p><p>Gueira leans into him then, pressing his face into Meis’s shoulder. Meis wraps his arms around him, holding him close. “He’s alive. At least we know he’s still alive.”</p><p>“For how much longer?” Gueira’s voice cracks on the words, and Meis can feel him gritting his teeth. “We don’t even know what that bastard is <i>doing</i> to him.”</p><p>There’s really nothing Meis can say to that, because he <i>doesn’t</i> know, and he can only be certain that whatever is happening to Lio, he’s suffering. None of them know exactly what made Kray Foresight decide the Burnish survivors were worth more to him alive than dead, but the first and only time Meis saw Lio paraded through the compound, naked and leashed at Kray’s heels, he began to have a terrible suspicion. Some sort of bargain has been made, and Lio is bearing all the weight of it alone. All they can do is try and make his sacrifice worthwhile, try to protect the rest of the Burnish without him and keep everyone else alive.</p><p>It’s not enough, of course. It’s never going to be enough.</p><p>Gueira draws back finally, his face stony. “Let’s go,” he says softly, and Meis nods.</p><p>The Burnish sleeping quarters are shit, frankly. The cluster of shoddily slapped-together prefab units looks like it’d fall over in a stiff breeze, even though the compound has already weathered a couple of the new planet’s storms without any worse damage than a couple of leaky roofs. There’s barely enough room for all of them and almost never any privacy, with as many as a dozen Burnish to a room in some cases. A few people have pushed bunks together or hung a blanket up like a curtain to create some small sense of personal space. Meis and Gueira took only a single bed for themselves, despite the fact that there’s not really enough space for two people on the small mattress. Ostensibly it’s to make more space for the others, but really Meis doubts either of them would sleep very well at this point if they weren’t tangled together, crushed against each other’s bodies. It’s always been that way, even when they were on the run, with seemingly the entire desert to themselves.</p><p>Incredibly no one else is in their room yet, probably still lining up for rations or being shuttled in from their work sites. The only sound is a low rumbling beneath their feet, a constant background noise from the power plant and water reclamation facility underneath the compound. It’s kept running mostly by the Burnish workers who aren’t on an off-site rotation. Meis sits down on the edge of the bed and unbuckles the prosthetic from his leg with a deep sigh. It’s always too tight, and he’s resigned to the fact that he can’t do anything about that. Gueira sits down on his right as he rubs at the red, raw skin where the straps were buckled, still holding half of Meis’s ration bar in his hand.</p><p>“You know I’m not going to accept this,” he says casually. “You need your strength.”</p><p>Meis shoots him a look from under the curtain of his hair. “So do you.”</p><p>Gueira huffs a short sigh of frustration. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing. I’m not delicate, Meis, you don’t have to baby me! Skipping one meal isn’t gonna kill me!”</p><p>“Maybe not, but don’t be so stubborn you can’t admit that you need it more than I do,” Meis snaps.</p><p>Gueira laughs humorlessly. “Half a ration bar isn’t going to make my <i>lung grow back,</i> Meis!”</p><p>“Don’t be a fucking idiot!” Meis huffs. “You know what I mean! Let me take care of you--”</p><p>“Well, who’s going to take care of <i>you?!</i>”</p><p>There’s silence for a moment. Gueira is panting, and while his shallow breaths aren’t as labored as they were earlier, the sound still sends a chill through Meis. He can’t help it. The terror that pierced him, back in the engine room holding Gueira as he coughed up impossible amounts of ash, has never really left him.</p><p>Gueira suddenly lets out a low, rueful chuckle, shaking his head. “This is stupid. What are we even doing?” He stares down at the ration bar. “We can’t both be Boss. Always giving up everything for everyone else.”</p><p>“Neither of us can,” Meis says softly.</p><p>Gueira leans on him, falling against his shoulder with a soft thud. He holds out the ration bar. “Half,” he says. “My final offer.”</p><p>“Technically, it’ll be a quarter.”</p><p>“Don’t be a fucking nerd, Meis. Take it or leave it. If I try to split it with one hand it ain’t gonna be pretty.”</p><p>Meis hesitates, then takes the other end of it, breaking off half. Gueira gulps down his before he can check to make sure the split was even. Meis rolls his eyes, then eats his section in turn. It’s really only a few bites worth of food. Supposedly these things are packed full of protein and nutrients, but it’s still a pitifully small excuse for a meal, even if they each had a whole one to themselves. But like everything else, it’s better than nothing.</p><p>“I can’t lose you, you know?” Meis’s voice sounds uncharacteristically small in his own ears. “Every time they ship me out in the morning I walk out of here wondering if it’s the last time I’m going to see you.”</p><p>“I know.” Gueira reaches across his lap to grab Meis’s hand in his own, squeezing it. “I know. But we’ve always had to take risks when it matters. Who would we even be if we didn’t?” He’s silent a moment, and shakes his head against Meis’s shoulder. “Not Mad Burnish, that’s for damn sure.”</p><p>They sit like that in silence for a moment longer, then Meis pulls himself the rest of the way up onto the bed and Gueira follows, lying down beside him with their heads on the same pillow. No matter what else changes, the way their bodies fit together at night always seems to be the same. Even their missing limbs can’t change that. He kisses Gueira, and Gueira kisses him back, echoing the hunger he knows they both feel for comfort, for closeness.</p><p>Because every night might be the last they have together, and Meis can never completely let himself forget that.</p>
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